


love's not time's fool

by rain_sleet_snow



Category: Lord Peter Wimsey - Dorothy L. Sayers
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-12
Updated: 2015-01-12
Packaged: 2018-03-07 08:33:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3168377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harriet and Peter spend Christmas Eve wrestling with a tricky question of novelist's logistics. (It all comes down to the clock.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	love's not time's fool

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Annariel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Annariel/gifts).



> A fandomstocking fic.

            “-but you see,” Harriet said, stabbing her paper viciously and leaving a splatter of ink behind on her notes, “it all comes down to the blasted _clock_.”

 

            Peter frowned, and rubbed at his chin. “I quite see, but – hmm.” He tapped his own pencil on a sheet of blotting paper. The pencil had been sharpened several times over with a knife so that the shavings were scattered all over the table, liberally coating the scrawled and scribbled-over sheets of notes that were meant to represent the outline of Harriet’s latest novel.

 

            Harriet watched Peter think, and fruitlessly racked her brains herself. It wasn’t that she wasn’t _pleased_ to have the makings of a novel in her hands, that she wasn’t secretly overjoyed that she could have the trappings of her married life – the luxury that still sat oddly on her shoulders; the pleasant country home she had always wanted; the sweet son, snuffling in his sleep in a corner, and the loving husband, her partner and her equal – as well as her writing. Peter’s encouragement was as nothing if she had no ideas, and she had feared that material comfort had taken inspiration from her. And then one day, she had an idle thought that led to several more idle thoughts, a set of problems that connected themselves in her mind, and her fingers itched for a pen to note down her thoughts. It was all so familiar that Harriet rejoiced.

 

            But she did wish that she hadn’t been obliged to call Peter in to solve this difficulty, as if she needed his help. Harriet drew mountain ranges on the edges of her notes, and forced herself to concede that she did, occasionally, need his help.

 

            Bredon stirred in his comfortable nest of blankets, and let out a small, experimental cry. Harriet twitched, but it was Peter who got up as if in a trance and picked up their son to soothe him, holding the baby against his chest and hushing him almost silently, eyes fixed on something that wasn’t there. Harriet noted, with a writer’s instinct for detail, the play of the dying firelight on two pale heads of hair, the curve of Peter’s neck as he bent his head to his son, the lovely hands she had always admired holding Bredon safely and securely.

 

            _Hands, heads, clocks_ , she thought, and then suddenly sat bolt upright as she thought of something else. She scrabbled through the notes on the table, and finally came up with one of the less-crumpled sheets, which she scanned frantically for a second before muting her cry of glee. Peter looked round, eyes focussed on the present again, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

 

            “Solved it, domina?” he said, and Harriet was about to reply, but the grandfather clock struck midnight very loudly and she was temporarily silenced. Bredon stirred once more, and Peter hushed him again, murmuring through the clock’s chimes.

 

            “Yes,” Harriet said, when the chimes had stopped. “I forgot – Eva is short-sighted. What she thinks she saw isn’t necessarily what’s really there. It’s important to the plot later, when Templeton is nailing down the poisoner, so the earlier I make it a factor – I can’t believe I didn’t think of that.”

 

            Peter smiled the smile that said he thought she was the most brilliant woman he’d ever met, and Harriet remembered what she’d said years before, in Oxford, about going up in flames for Peter. She burned for him all the time, now, and she wasn’t sorry.

 

            She got up, hissing as her feet burned with pins and needles, and made her way over to Peter and Bredon, who was now chewing his father’s shirt collar in his sleep. She laid a hand on Peter’s shoulder and a hand on Bredon’s back and kissed her husband softly, pressing as close to him as their son’s presence would allow.

 

            “And I forgot, too,” Peter said quietly, his head bent to hers, his grey eyes very warm.

 

            “Forgot what?” Harriet traced the curve of his ear, the line of his jaw with her fingers, and stroked Bredon’s back.

 

            Peter nodded at the clock, smiling. “As you said – it all comes down to the blasted clock. Happy Christmas, Harriet.”   


End file.
